


Planet Marius

by telm_393



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Physical Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3703887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius loves his friends, so he keeps his mouth shut when their teasing goes too far, even though sometimes they remind him of somebody he doesn’t want to be reminded of. </p><p>Marius copes, he denies and he smiles and he says everything is okay and he laughs when he wants to cry because he knows he’s as silly and stupid as everyone thinks he is.</p><p>Until one day he can’t cope anymore, and everything falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Planet Marius

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for this (http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/14280.html?thread=14481352#t14481352) prompt on the kink meme. 
> 
> It got pretty heavy.
> 
> Another warning: there's some really brief references to abusive therapy.

“Maybe you would be able to make it in the real world,” Marius’s grandfather said once, “if you could communicate like a normal person.”

A normal person.

There are normal people, and then there’s Marius.

He grew up with the specter of Normal People looming over him. People who were good and correct.

Though eventually it turned out that Marius wasn’t even just abnormal, that the words normal and abnormal were placeholders for an entirely different state of being.

After a while, Marius discovered that there were lots of abnormal people out there and they were all better than he was. It took some time, but eventually Marius figured out that when his grandfather was talking about normal people, he was actually talking about _real_ people.

That was when Marius realized that he didn’t count.

+

Marius learns that he is not allowed to refuse things when he is a child, because when he tries to say _no_ , when he tries to say _I don’t want to_ or _stop_ , he is punished, he is yelled at and sent to bed without supper and locked in the closet.

When he says _yes_ , when he is docile and silent as he should be, he is called a good boy and then he is ignored.

Marius has strange feelings about being ignored, because he knows that if he’s being ignored he’s not being hurt, because people only pay attention to him when he’s bad and they want to correct him, but he also feels so alone. He wants his aunt to hug him, but she pushes him away. He wants his grandfather to have nice conversations with him, but he never gets a turn to speak. He wants somebody to be his friend, but the other children avoid him and make fun of him. The closest thing to a friend he ever makes is the girl he meets when he's eight years old who likes sneaking into his house's backyard at night, and he likes playing with her, but he never even learns her name and she disappears when he's eleven just as suddenly as she appeared.

Marius is all alone because he’s useless and stupid and people don’t like him and they don’t love him, they tolerate him, they put up with him because they have to.

Marius’s grandfather tells him he’s a burden, that life would be so much easier if he didn’t have to deal with all of Marius’s needs.

Marius’s grandfather tells him that his mind is very strange and twisted and broken, that Marius will never be able to deal with the real world, will always need his grandfather to keep him.

Marius is constantly terrified. He is only ever in his room or at school, and when he wants to go out to play his grandfather tells him he’s not allowed because the world is a dangerous place for people like him.

Sometimes his grandfather says that life would be so much easier if Marius would die.

Sometimes Marius thinks that that’s true.

And sometimes he thinks, _I hope_ you _die._

He knows he doesn’t deserve anything, but he’s very selfish and he still wants more.

The world that he lives in suffocates him, the walls of his room close in on him because he is all alone, and he knows that there’s more out there and he’s terrified of it but he doesn’t want to die here either.

He can’t deal with the real world. He can barely even leave the house. He’s too delicate, too strange, too shameful.

Even when he’s old enough to vote, he is a young child.

After college Marius discovers something that his grandfather kept from him for his own good (because everything his grandfather does to him is for Marius’s own good).

He discovers that his father, the man who abandoned him, who he was always told to hate, loved him.

He discovers, through the words of a kind gardener who speaks to him like he’s a person worth talking to, that he meant everything to his father, but his grandfather pushed Georges away.

And that’s when the rage that Marius has buried for years bubbles up to the surface of his consciousness as he realizes that he has been kept from so many things that might have made him happy for his whole life, and it may have been for his own good but he is _tired_. He is so tired that for the first time in his life, he does something that he’s only ever guiltily dreamt about before.

He disobeys his grandfather.

He decides that instead of getting a comfortable job as a paralegal and staying at home like his grandfather wants him to, he’s going to graduate school to get a degree in linguistics instead, because he loves linguistics and he can talk about it for hours even though nobody wants to listen, and for once in his life he’s going to do something that he wants to do.

He’s not allowed to want, but he _does_. He manages to get scholarships that cover his entire graduate school career, and that’s when he tells his grandfather what he’s going to do.

His grandfather is very, very angry.

He says that Marius is silly. He says that Marius is an idiot for thinking that he can make a job out of his stupid little obsession. He says that Marius is forbidden to pursue this foolishness, and that it’s for his own good.

And Marius says, “I’m…I’m an _adult._ ”

(“You’re deluding yourself. You still have a child’s mind.”)

He says, “I _want—_ ”

(“It doesn’t matter what you want! I’m the one who knows what’s best for you.”)

He says, “I’m going to!”

(“How _dare_ you disobey me?”)

And finally, Marius says, “I’m leaving.”

His grandfather replies, “You’ll never survive out there.”

“Well,” Marius says, and he’s shaking so hard he’s almost fallen over, “I’d rather die than stay with you.”

Marius leaves, and he wishes he could say that he never looks back, but he does.

He looks back every single day, because he knows he’s made a big mistake.

Marius is a child who has pushed himself out into the big city, a child with nothing but a deep knowledge of things nobody cares about and a string of diagnoses.

But at least now he can almost breathe.

At least now he doesn’t have to get yelled at every day.

At least now there are people that surround him, and even though they ignore him too it’s not because they don’t care about him, it’s because they don’t know him.

And then Marius meets Courfeyrac and the Amis, and they know he’s wrong and abnormal but they’re willing to talk to him and smile at him, so Marius will take it. He’ll take their laughter over stony silence any day, even if their laughter is directed at him.

+

Marius’s friends say all sorts of things to him. They’re nice, they are, and he thinks they care about him at least sometimes, he thinks they’re okay with him at least sometimes, but he knows they think he’s silly and not very bright and he knows that sometimes they wonder why he even hangs around. He knows this because of all of the things they say when they make fun of him, all of the friendly offhand comments that he parses and obsesses over for days afterward.

He knows he’s an outsider among them, Courfeyrac’s friend, Courfeyrac’s awkward roommate who tags along to meetings.

He doesn’t understand the things that they understand quite as quickly. He’s slow, he’s always been slow. They think a lot of things about him that might not be true—they all think his childhood was charmed, and he guesses it wasn’t all that bad but it wasn’t all that _good_ either—but the truth is so much worse anyway.

Marius would rather be known as a spoiled, stupid rich boy who’s never been through anything than what he really is.

(A subhuman who means nothing in the end.)

+

The teasing is all in good fun.

Marius knows this.

The teasing is all in good fun, and they don’t mean it to hurt, so he just smiles and laughs and tries not to show how miserable it makes him because if he does it’ll just mean that he can’t take a joke and they’ll laugh more.

The teasing is all in good fun, and they don’t mean it to hurt, they make sure that everybody knows that, they make sure that even he knows that, they’re nice to him and they ask for his opinion and they invite him to their movie nights and they have conversations with him and call him their friend and really the teasing isn’t anything worse than the way that they tease the others, and nothing that they say hurts nearly as much as the things that his grandfather used to say, but sometimes he’s reminded.

The teasing is all in good fun, and they don’t mean it to hurt, so it doesn’t.

That’s what Marius tells himself.

(Lately he feels like he’s wandering through the world, confused, trying to forget things that he can’t forget and that keep coming to the forefront of his mind. There are things he does his best to ignore, but now they’ve started to become everything.)

He says that he had a normal childhood, and that’s what he tells himself too. He tells himself that nothing hurts him, hoping that if he says it enough it’ll become true. He tells himself he’s okay because it’s silly to be upset about the past, it’s better to just not think about the past.

The only problem is that lately it keeps coming back to him, all the things that he’s buried, all the things that he’s tried so hard to never think about.

If he doesn’t think about it, it can’t hurt him.

The only problem is that everything reminds him of things he doesn’t want to be reminded of, feelings and memories that he’s always done his best to crush and never take notice of springing to the forefront.

Marius is coping like he’s coped for his whole life, he’s coping by pretending that nothing he didn’t like has ever happened to him. He doesn’t fall apart, he stays together even though the stitch job on his soul is sloppy.

Until the stitches finally pull apart, and Marius ends up in pieces strewn all over the ground.

+

Marius knows his inability to stay focused is annoying.

Sometimes Enjolras sighs at him during meetings, rolls his eyes. “Marius, did you catch that?” he asks, and sometimes Marius has to say no because he’s a bad liar so saying yes wouldn’t work and he was too busy obsessing about this test or that paper or what that offhand comment meant or how to get through the rest of the day without just giving up and going to sleep. Then Enjolras has to explain himself again, this time with Marius actually listening, and if he misses it again he doesn’t say.

The others laugh, and he should be used to it by now because people have been laughing at him all his life but he still blushes and is sure he’s bright red and Jehan always rubs his shoulder in a comforting way and says, “Happens to everyone,” because Jehan’s nice.

He’s also lying, though, because it doesn’t happen that often to the others. It’s because the others are better. The only person who annoys Enjolras more than Marius does is Grantaire.

There’s always Courfeyrac, though, but even Courfeyrac laughs at Marius sometimes when he’s particularly clumsy or says something that comes off as really ditzy.

It makes sense, though, because Marius does say silly things when he isn’t paying attention and he asks stupid, simple questions and he sometimes has ideas that don’t align with those of the others that are always slammed down because he’s wrong and he’s not good with people and he’s clumsy and people don’t like him and the people that might are going to leave soon because he’s worthless, worthless, worthless.

He knows he’s not right, knows he’s a freak, it’s really no wonder that sometimes Courfeyrac chuckles and says, “Oh, Marius, I wonder what it’s like on that planet you came from.”

Marius isn’t normal and he’s never been, but he desperately wishes he could be. He wishes he came from Planet Earth just like everybody else.

He tries his best to sleep at night and it should be easy because he’s tired all the time. He lets the quiet wrap around him and closes his eyes and does hist best to drift off, but it’s hard. He has bad dreams that he can barely remember in the morning, dreams that leave him feeling drained.

The emptiness in his stomach has been getting worse lately. It’s not the kind of emptiness that food can fill, and he can barely keep anything but small portions down anyway.

He tries not to look at himself in the mirror. Instead he covers the full-length one in his room with a blanket so he won’t have to deal with his greasy hair or his gaunt, overly freckled face or the body that makes him flush in shame whenever he so much as thinks about it.

He can feel himself shaking as he steps out of his room because there’s an Amis meeting today but he feels wrong and he runs his hands through his hair as he walks into the living room.

He can’t miss a meeting because he _feels wrong_ , but he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what could happen today, of all the stupid things he could say, of the things the others could say to him.

The thing is that he _knows_ they’re not trying to hurt him. He knows because he thinks they’d probably stop if he told them to—it’s just that "stop" is one of those words that he never learned to say—and the others aren’t as bothered by the friendly teasing directed at them as he is by the friendly teasing that is directed at him and the things other people have said to him have been so much crueler, so clearly meant to scar.

(And they did scar, they did.)

Marius’s friends—they are hacking at him, leaving him with open wounds all over, but they _don’t know_ and he can’t tell them because he can’t communicate like a real person.

And the worst part is that they care about him (they do care about him, whenever people who aren’t them aren’t nice to him, or even tease him like they do, they defend him, even the ones who don’t know him as well, and that makes Marius so _happy_ ), and he cares about them and he desperately wants them to like him as much as he likes them, but every time they joke with him (and that’s the thing, they’re trying to joke _with_ him, they’re not being serious, they think they’re laughing with him and Marius can’t bring himself to tell them how utterly wrong they are) he hears an echo of his grandfather’s voice.

His grandfather was so serious about the things he said, and some of those things he picked at and picked at until they became gaping, bleeding holes in Marius’s personality are the things that the others hit, and no matter how benign their teasing comment is, all Marius can think about is a childhood spent being told he was stupid and crazy and unfit for the real world, a childhood spent crying because he was being yelled at and being yelled at for crying, a childhood spent locked in a dark closet, no longer asking to be let out.

A childhood spent being told _quiet hands_ , being forced to make eye contact, being chastised for refusing to do the things that were good for him but that didn’t feel good at all.

Marius has learned that he doesn’t really matter at all, that nobody needs him, that nobody wants him, and at this point he knows that he’s so incredibly lucky that there are people willing to put up with him that he laughs and smiles when they tease him.

He’s always wanted to belong somewhere, and now that he does it doesn’t really hurt so much (it doesn’t it doesn’t it doesn’t) to pretend that he gets the joke.

Marius is now in the back room of the Musain among everybody else, and the funny thing is that he can’t even remember how he got here. Courfeyrac smiles at him and Marius smiles back brightly. Marius the innocent, the sheltered, the sweet, the silly, the _punchline_. He’s so good at faking smiles at this point, sometimes he’s even proud of it.

He sits next to Courfeyrac and is surrounded by his friends, and he wishes he could feel safe in this situation like he used to instead of frightened.

Everyone’s talking about Smart People Things and Marius could join in but he knows that the things he says just aren’t as _interesting_ or _important_ as what the others say.

Marius knows a lot of facts and statistics, he can inform with the best of them, but he’s not smart like the others are, and he knows it and they know it. He’s slow. He’s slow at everything except the few things that he knows a lot about, the few things that he remembers, that he’s good at. _Savant-esque,_ one of his teachers said once. _But not quite there, the poor thing._

Today they’re talking about—well, they’re talking. Marius misses most of the beginning of the meeting because he can’t stop looking outside, thinking about how big the city is and how big the world is compared to the city and how little he is compared to the city and the world. He rocks back and forth slowly even though he’s not supposed to, but he manages to stop himself and instead twines his fingers together and rubs the heels of his hands together.

“Marius?” Enjolras asks loudly, in that voice that makes it clear that he’s said Marius’s name more than once. Enjolras has one eyebrow raised imperiously. Marius doesn’t know how he does that.

Marius looks at Enjolras owlishly.

“What do you think?” Enjolras asks.

“Um…” Marius says, trying to make it seem like he actually knows what’s going on.

There are chuckles around the room and Marius wants to sink into the ground and become part of the hardwood floor. People walk all over him anyway.

“Marius Pontmercy, always there with an incisive comment,” Grantaire says wryly.

 _Shut up,_ his grandfather says. _You never have anything to say._

“Truly, what would we do without his input?” Bahorel joins in.

_You’re a disappointment._

They don’t need him. They need people who respond to questions quickly, people who aren’t so slow, and Marius tries to smile but instead his chest gets all tight and he has to do his best to not flap his hands next to his head like he does sometimes when he’s upset.

Feuilly chuckles, “How’s the weather up there in the clouds?”

Marius shrugs and tries to laugh, but all that comes out is a high humming sound.

“Be nice,” Jehan says. “He’s a dreamer. It’s honestly surprising that we manage to get through to him as often as we do.”

_Sometimes I find it incredible that you ever make sense at all, considering how you are._

Marius goes to a place underwater, smiles dreamily and shrugs and pretends that everything is just fine, and when the meeting ends and everyone is just milling around he slips out of the room and veers into the hall that has the bathrooms in it and sits next to the women’s bathroom as he comes back to the surface.

He feels sick and tears are stinging at his eyes and he shouldn’t feel bad, he shouldn’t. There’s nothing to feel bad about. People don’t yell at him here, at least. That’s good.

All the things that he’s not supposed to think about keep crashing over him, hitting him and leaving him stunned and staring. The truth is that he does remember his dreams sometimes, he keeps having dreams where he’s a little kid and his grandfather is yelling at him and Marius is so terrified, it’s silly that he’s so terrified of a man he hasn’t seen in months, now. Sometimes when he feels bad or guilty because he’s done something bad, like when he’s said something insensitive (he does that a lot and then he forgets to apologize because he ends up just stuttering and then running away) he sits in the smallest closet in the apartment in the dark and cries because he doesn’t like closed spaces and he doesn’t like the dark, but it’s what he deserves, small dark spaces are all that he deserves.

He’s managed to Not Think About all of the Things That Didn’t Happen And Weren’t Bad for a few months, but he’s afraid that it’s not working that well anymore. He’s living in a world where every step he takes threatens to send him down the rabbit hole of his memories.

Sometimes he smells a cologne that reminds him of his grandfather’s and he has to lock himself in some bathroom to try and get his breathing under control. His grandfather is the monster under his bed, and Marius spent so much time around him that at this point he can admit, just to himself, that he’d do anything to never have to see that man again.

Everything around him is sharp enough to make him bleed and he is always afraid.

“Hey, buddy,” somebody says, and Marius jumps. The back of his head hits the wall.

“Woah, don’t hurt yourself,” Grantaire says, laughing a little as he slides down the wall to sit next to Marius.

Marius twitches his lips upwards into a distracted smile. He doesn’t want Grantaire to think Marius is a bad sport. Doesn’t want Grantaire to think that Marius was bothered by his comment today. The truth doesn’t matter. At least, Marius’s truth doesn’t matter.

“So…” Grantaire says. “You okay?”

“What?” Marius asks, surprised, and then he feels stupid because that’s not the right answer. The right answer is _yes_.

“I dunno, you seemed kinda off.”

“I always seem off,” Marius mumbles.

“Can’t argue with that, but…I don’t know. You kinda spaced for a while there, and I know that’s not exactly weird, but then you disappeared, so.”

“Oh,” Marius says. He traces shapes on his jeans. “Okay.”

“So?”

“So,” Marius echoes.

“So you okay?”

Marius shrugs. “Yes.” He looks at Grantaire and smiles his best smile. “I’m always okay.”

Grantaire smirks at him. “No one’s ever always okay.”

Marius looks at his knees again. Shrugs again. “I am.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Am too.”

“You seem kinda off lately. All I’m saying.”

“I’m not off. I’m always weird.”

“Not _you_ weird. I just…you look so upset sometimes.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“No kidding. I never mean to look upset either, but I do all the fucking time.”

Marius bites his lip hard and he doesn’t want to cry so instead he does one of those things that he’s not supposed to do and blurts something out. “If I tell you something really terrible, do you promise to keep it a secret?”

Marius’s voice is doing this wobbly thing that he doesn’t like, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing but this is a moment that’s become a desperate moment, like when he told his grandfather _I’m leaving._

“Tell me first,” Grantaire says.

“No, you have to promise.”

“Okay, okay.”

Marius takes a deep breath and then all of his words tumble out like they should be tripping over each other but really they’re going in a straight line, “Sometimes the things you guys say really, really hurt my feelings.”

Marius covers his face with his hands in embarrassment after he says that, drawing his knees up to his chest and hunching his shoulders. Maybe if he makes himself very small he can disappear. That’s what he did a lot when he was a kid.

If he makes himself small he can almost pretend he’s not here, that he’s not just nonexistent because he doesn’t matter but because he really isn't in the world at all, that there’s a place in the universe that’s gone blank, fixed the glitch that caused him.

“Fuck,” Marius hears Grantaire say very softly, and he cringes. “Marius, I…”

“I don’t mean to be like this,” Marius says. He shouldn’t talk over people but he does it all the time anyway. He never got the chance to speak up as a kid, and now he steamrolls over other people’s words because he needs his to happen too. “I want to be different, I want to be good, but…I’m a burden.”

“Wait, what?”

“There’s something wrong in my brain, it’s all twisted and useless. He always said I was a burden, I…”

“Who?”

“Who?”

“Who’s _he_?”

“My…” Marius doesn’t want to say it, he doesn’t want to say it, he can’t say it, so instead he says, “He always said I…I couldn’t live in the real world, so that’s why he didn’t let me go out and the other kids didn’t want to play with me anyway, and I’m too stupid to be around people like you guys so I don’t say anything because I like you and I want you guys to like me too—”

“Marius, we do like you, you’re our friend, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“No one ever does. But…I _am_ a burden, he said it would’ve been better if I’d just died because life would be so much easier for everyone, even me, would’ve been a mercy if I’d died when I was a baby.”

“Woah, what the fuck?”

“He knew what was best for me and that’s why he sent me to those doctors and that’s why he yelled and that’s why he didn’t let me out, the world’s dangerous for people like me, it’s not his fault, he was doing the right thing, he was _helping_ me, he…” Marius is trying so hard to convince Grantaire of the goodness of his grandfather, of the fundamental rightness of everything his grandfather said and did, and he’s trying so hard to convince himself.

He opens his mouth to keep babbling pointlessly, to keep saying all of these things that he’s never said before, but to his horror, no words come out when he opens his mouth.

Instead, he bursts into tears.

He’s not supposed to cry, crying is bad, crying is what people do when they’re weak, when they can’t take the things they deserve, crying just shows everyone that he can’t handle life. He covers his mouth with his hands and shuts his eyes tight. Tears leak out and he’s trying so hard to cry silently because children should be seen and not heard, and honestly, they shouldn’t even be seen, but his sobbing is tearing out of his chest and it’s only slightly muffled by his hands, and he’s making strange, keening noises.

He shakes his head, he doesn’t want Grantaire to see this, nobody should see this. He wants to tell Grantaire to go away but he also wants Grantaire to stay here, but nobody ever stays when he cries, not in a nice way, at least. He doesn’t think Grantaire’s going to yell, so he’ll be going away soon.

Grantaire wraps his arms around Marius’s shaking shoulders, and Marius almost stops crying, he’s so surprised.

He doesn’t stop crying.

Instead, he just starts sobbing harder and ends up twisting his body so that he’s sobbing into Grantaire’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”

He doesn’t know what he’s sorry about.

He guesses he’s just sorry he exists.

Sorry is his natural state.

“Shhh,” Grantaire says softly. “S’ok,” he whispers, rubbing Marius’s back tentatively.

Marius forgot how much he loves being touched like this. Maybe he never knew. Nobody ever hugs him, he doesn’t know why. He’s trying so hard to remember the last time somebody held him, but he really can’t remember.

Apparently, in the recorded history of Planet Marius, the first time the one and only occupant of that barren land was ever held was when he was twenty-one years old by a man who usually only hugged people when he was drunk.

Marius’s hands are bunching up Grantaire’s shirt and he’s sure that this position is uncomfortable but he doesn’t even care, he hasn’t cried for such a long time, he hasn’t felt the pressure of another person’s arms around him in a nice way in such a long time.

“I’m a _burden_ ,” he says. “I’m a _burden_ and I shouldn’t be alive and he was right, he was right, I can’t communicate and I can’t…can’t…be _real_ and…my _brain_ , my _brain_ is wrong and…I’m _bad,_ I don’t deserve anything and the world’s not meant for me…” Marius’s words are eaten up by sobs.

The sobbing is something uncontrolled and hysterical and he’s shocked that he’s making these sounds.

“What’s happening?” somebody says in the back of Marius’s mind, loud and alarmed.

“Fuck,” Grantaire mutters, and he takes one of his hands from Marius’s back. It seems like he’s waving it or something, but Marius isn’t sure. “Go away, go away!” he hears Grantaire hiss, and then there are footsteps and Marius doesn’t even care because he barely understands what’s going on.

His sobbing becomes something softer, something more controlled, and he can kind of breathe again, and eventually he’s just shuddering and crying, collapsed against Grantaire’s wiry frame, exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Don’t,” Grantaire says. “Don’t…fuck, Marius, I had no fucking clue. None of us did, we’d never’ve said that shit to you if we’d known how you felt about it, and…no, shit, we should’ve known. We literally made fun of you for being sensitive, we should’ve known we were hurting you. Fuck, Marius. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Marius is barely crying anymore, but he grips Grantaire harder at those words, because he’s wanted to hear those words for such a long time, he’s just been so scared. He’s still scared, but at least this moment is okay.

Grantaire hugs him back fiercely. “Okay,” Grantaire whispers. “We’re gonna fix this.”

“No, you can’t tell,” Marius says. “They can’t know.”

“Marius, they were here, didn’t you hear them? They know something’s going on.”

Marius lets out a distressed sound against Grantaire’s skin.

“They know,” Grantaire repeats. “We’re gonna help you. You’re hurting and we should’ve seen it, but we didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Marius says weakly.

“Yeah fucking right. But we’re gonna help you. Promise.”

“Everything’s strange and I can’t stop remembering and I don’t…I’m not…I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared.”

“I know. But it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna make this up to you. And we’re gonna help you get through this. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“I know you didn’t wanna hurt me.”

“We did, though. We did. And now we’re gonna do our best to make it not hurt so much.”

“I just wanna be okay. I just want him to leave my head. I just wanna live without him. I just…” Marius trembles. “I don’t deserve, but…I wanna…I wanna be okay. Happy.”

“If an asshole like me deserves to be happy, you do too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Marius. It’s gonna be okay.” 


End file.
